UT Rector penned a ’greeting to the future’ for the University of Cambridge
On 17 September 2009, UT Rector Alar Karis penned a ’greeting to the future’ for the University of Cambridge on the occasion of the university’s 800th anniversary, to be opened a hundred years from now.
The University of Cambridge, which has for centuries occupied a place among the world’s leading universities, has selected 800 individuals from all over the world, including 150 academics, and has, on the occasion of its 800th anniversary, requested them to contribute a brief essay or a vision of the future for the year 2109 in their own hand.
„I am writing this for students of the University of Tartu, who hopefully will speak Estonian and will be studying at the University of Tartu,“ were Rector Karis’s words to describe the greeting addressed to the year 2109.
„I think that although in a hundred years’ time, the universities will have become much more integrated than today, the University of Tartu will still be there as a brand. Certainly, the substance of that brand will be different – for instance, the term ’periphery’ is apt to have attained a positive connotation and the university will hopefully have established itself as an institution that has a serious say in cutting-edge science,“ Rector Karis said. The precise content of the letter is known only to its author – and will be revealed in due course to his or her future audience.
800 visions of the future, one for each year of its history, will be stored in the library of the venerable University of Cambridge, to be returned to the contributors in order to be opened on the occasion of the 900th anniversary of the university.
The list of individuals graced by the University of Cambridge with the privilege of contributing a similar greeting includes, amongst others, Charles Darwin, Winston Churchill, Rosalind Franklin, Lord Byron ja Francis Bacon. The University of Tartu and Rector Alar Karis are the only representatives of Estonia selected to participate in this special project.
Additional information: http://www.800.cam.ac.uk/page/35/letters-to-the-future.htm
Karin Volmer
University of Tartu
Press Representative
Tel. +372 737 5683
Mob. +372 5202807
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